In the ubiquitous security surveillance era, pattern recognition and RFID technologies have been widely used in many applications.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,123,149 disclosed a tracking system for assets and personnel of a commercial enterprise. The system utilizes the RFID technology for object tracking. As shown in FIG. 1, the interrogator and tracking device both communicate with a common information backbone 101. Information backbone 101 provides access to a tag identifier database. The system may completely track the object at locations equipped with an RFID interrogator, such as A, B, C, X, and Y; however, the system is completely unaware of the motion path of the object within the surveillance range.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,791,603 disclosed an event driven video tracking system. The system utilizes the camera for object tracking, and may track the object within the surveillance range, however, without knowing what the object is. When it is necessary to track a specific object, the system requires a considerable human effort and time to filter and search the large amount of video data one by one.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,151,454 disclosed a system and method for location of objects, by integrating RFID onto the camera for object locating and/or tracking. The system may be used at a passenger terminal for tracking passengers or objects; however, the system cannot track the motion path of the passenger or the object within the surveillance range.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,700,533 disclosed an asset and personnel tracking system utilizing a global positioning system (GPS). Although RFID and GPS are integrated for object tracking, the system performs outdoor object tracking while unable to know the motion path of the indoor object.